


Vermont

by masonverger_rising, smallestshrike



Series: Vermont Verse [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Drugged Sex, F/M, Implied/Referenced Incest, Parent/Child Incest, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sibling Incest, Underage Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-12 09:26:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16870408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masonverger_rising/pseuds/masonverger_rising, https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallestshrike/pseuds/smallestshrike
Summary: Abigail Hobbs died.That is what Hannibal Lecter wanted the world to believe. But certain parties have the time, resources, and drive to prove the lie in that.Mason Verger is in rehab.That is what he has made the world believe. With the cover of an isolated institution, he can roam the country freely, digging into Doctor Lecter's grubby little secrets.





	1. Vermont

**Author's Note:**

> This is the full crosspost of an RP series between myself and @smallestshrike, originally written on tumblr in 2014. The RP occurred between the airing of season 1 and season 2 of Hannibal, beginning before the Vergers had been seen on screen, but after the casting of Michael Pitt and Katherine Isabelle.
> 
> The plot is canon-divergent after 'Savoureux', with characterisation of the Vergers based on the novels, and the few bits of information that were available before season 2 aired.

_Mason_

 

“ _Ugh_ , what a dump,” Mason Verger folds the collar of his oversized fur coat up to cover his mouth as he peers out of the tinted windows of the Rolls-Royce, “You’d think he would have done up  _one_  of these places at least – he can’t have all his fun in  _Baltimore_ , can he?”

The driver doesn’t respond at all; he is a silent, hulking presence in the front of the vehicle, though this doesn’t perturb Mason in the slightest.

Mason pulls on his gloves with a long-suffering sigh and resettles his glasses, “Get the lock picks then, the sooner we’re out of here the better –  _New York_ , I swear there’s got to be more in New York. If Barrett doesn’t pin down those records soon I’ll –” the threat hangs, unfinished.

Mason doesn’t wait for the driver to open the door for him and, as his shoes hit the muddy drive, his full lips make a moue of disgust. His breath clouds in the air and he pulls his coat more tightly around him and takes in the surroundings.

The house is old and the eaves and porch slant precariously, though the roof at least has been repaired. The building is surrounded by an expanse of frost-browned and muddy lawn and the rear of the property backs onto a stretch of dense forest that is etched in red and gold against the drab grey sky.

“Go around the back and see if there’s a cellar door, then go through the house,” Mason says, waving a hand at the driver, “And if you find anything don’t touch it.”

The driver starts toward the building but Mason stops him with another flick of his hand.

Mason takes a couple of steps away from the car, staring at the front porch and then gives a nervous, high-pitched giggle, “I swear to god you better have your gun ready,” he tells the driver, “there’s someone living here.”

 

 

_Abigail_

 

She has been awake a little while today. Longer than yesterday, at least - long enough to take the pill bottle down from the night-stand, unscrew the plastic lid, pop two of the fentanyl pills and swallow them with a glass of fresh water. He must have left it there, or else had someone else do it for him. Who, she has no idea, but she’s not yet strong enough to move around by herself. Or perhaps she is, but she likes it better this way: lying here, relieved of all responsibility, nothing to do but numb the pain in her head over and over and over again, swallowing pill after little blue pill.

She’s been here before, of course. The same kind of situation, under slightly different circumstances. A bed in a clean, private hospital room has given way to a rickety four poster in a damp, shabby bedroom. The wallpaper is peeling, and no matter how many blankets he leaves her, she can’t seem to keep warm. Funny, that he’d let a place get so dilapidated.

“ _They’re not likely to come looking for you in such a run down place…_ ” he had said to her, lingering a moment to smooth down her hair (was that just her imagination?) as he changed the dressing on the side of her head. “ _Now you can really start again, Abigail. Isn’t that what you wanted_?”

It seems she can’t go more than a few months without bleeding all over herself, and some dark, sadistic part of her finds this very, very funny. Hilarious, even. She suppresses a giggle as she lies back against the mercifully clean, soft sheets. She pills are working now - she can tell by the pleasant itch in her legs and arms, the feeling of heaviness coming over her eyelids - so, so hard to keep her eyes open. So difficult to stay awake. And why bother, when oblivion is so much sweeter? Why bother when there’s nobody present to comment upon your lack of consciousness?

Is she sleeping already? There’s a tapping sound, perhaps more like a clicking, but she can’t hear where it’s coming from. The shuttered windows, maybe - another rainfall, perhaps some hail. Is it winter? It must be. Time has become oddly warped.

No reason to worry about it. Dr. Lecter had said that her hearing would be different now, that for a while she might experience distortions of sound. No cartilage to cradle the noises of the outside world, nothing to pick up and carry the sinusoidal waves to her inner ear. She would be able to hear just fine, he had said. But things might sound strange for a while. It might be hard to tell where sounds were coming from.

But there it is again, that tapping noise. A creak, or a scratch? It’s difficult to tell, but Abigail tells herself not to worry, allows her eyelids to fall closed. Heavy, heavy - everything so very heavy. And nobody knows where she is. He promised her that.

“ _I did this to save you, Abigail,_ ” he had sounded so human, when he’d said it. Almost vulnerable. Almost convincing. “ _I did this so you could start again”._

 

Mason

 

The driver’s great bulk makes the warped boards of the porch creak and moan as he peers through the window, trying to see past the decaying lace drapes and the accumulated grime.

Mason buries his grin in the collar of his coat and takes several deep breaths of sharp, cold air. Anticipation, excitement, and some odd breed of fear mingle and pool in his gut, the base of his spine tingles and he feels a giddy sort of elation,  _This is it,_ he thinks _, I swear to god I’ve got him now._

It’s an agony to wait for the driver to nod and when he does Mason flies to the front door, he can feel the floor boards bow under his slight weight and bites his lip, taking a moment to savour the rush of anticipation. He leans toward the door and his smile is all teeth when he sees that the door isn’t locked – isn’t even latched – with one finger Mason pushes the door open with a trill of rusty hinges.

The hall is swathed in near impenetrable gloom, Mason slips off his glasses and stows them in a coat pocket. Visions of drug labs and sex dungeons dance through his mind, he pulls his coat collar up to protect the lower half of his face against the dust-laden air and pervasive smell of damp, and creeps into the darkness.

Though they walk lightly it is almost impossible to keep the floors from creaking as they case the ground floor. The driver checks the abandoned rooms as Mason lingers in doorways watching. It seems that the only things left behind are a few broken pieces of furniture, but there has been some rushed attempt to clean the place, stains on the floors and wall where  _something_  had been for a very long time, and the only the trailing remnants of what must have once been prodigious cobwebs still clinging to the ceilings.

When he is certain that the lower floor is abandoned, Mason starts for the stairs, motioning for the driver to follow. His breath catches in his chest and he has to suppress a giggle. Upstairs there is more evidence of occupation, it is much cleaner than below and the ancient hall runner has footprints trodden over the layer of dust. At the far end of the hall a door stands open and, careful to make no noise, Mason hurries to peek around the door frame.

What he sees is so much  _better_  than he had hoped for that he has to take a moment to compose himself, leaning back against the peeling wall of the hallway with his hands pressed over his face, blood flushes his cheeks and his ears burn. The driver waits a little way down the hall in silence through this display. When Mason has regained control of himself he carefully steps through the doorway.

He stops, taking in the scene. The room is dominated by an elaborate if careworn four-poster bed, and in it is the huddled figure of a young girl, sleeping or feigning unconsciousness. She’s milk-pale in the dim room, almost the same colour as the bandages that cover the side of her head, and a shock of dark auburn hair is spread over her pillowslip. She’s shivering despite the layers of blankets and comforters that cocoon her.

_Uh-oh Doctor Lecter,_  Mason thinks,  _What_ have _you been getting up to here?_ The implications of a living, breathing Abigail Hobbs are not lost on Mason, and this knowledge gives him a warm feeling inside.

The rest of the room is simply furnished, a chair and small desk by the window, and a bedside table within her reach. On the bedside table there’s a half-full glass of water and a bottle of pills.

Mason watches her for a moment and then shrugs inwardly and crosses to the bedside table, he picks up the pill bottle and glances at the label, “ _Nice,_ ” he says under his breath, he shakes out two of the pills and tosses them back. He follows them with a sip of water from the glass, careful to drink from the place where there is already a faint, perfect imprint of Abigail’s lips.

 

_Abigail_

 

The sounds have been growing louder, and there’s a small part of Abigail that is afraid, that would have her clamber awkwardly out of bed and try to hide. It would be a pointless endeavor, of course. There’s nowhere  _to_ hide, and besides, the part of her that cares is struggling to break the gently rolling surface of the fentanyl, the drug-haze that’s kept her semi-conscious and delusional for the past two weeks. And maybe this is just another delusion, another half-dream playing tricks on her senses, taunting the hole in the side of her head with phantom noises, the whispers and ghosts of action. There is no one in the house, of course. Nobody is coming for her. Should that be comforting? She isn’t sure anymore.

She wants to her open her eyes when she hears - or thinks she hears - the door creak open. But it’s a struggle to so much as raise her eyebrows. The fear is there again, pulsing dimly below the soft waves of the opiates, reminding her that she is not safe, was never safe, hasn’t been safe her entire life. But it’s such a terrible thing to contemplate, when there’s so much pleasure uncoiling in her body, a kind of lazy, sleepy pleasure that she’s fast become addicted to. Why think on it? Why not just relax. Why not just fall asleep again.

But there are footsteps. She’s sure of it now, her good ear picking up on the location the closer they approach, moving around the bed, taking their time, slow, steady footfalls. She frowns in her half-sleep, her lips parting to raise a question, but not quite managing to make any sound. Is it Hannibal? It could be. That’s the most rational explanation, after all. Somebody has to get her more water. More drugs. Somebody has to feed her.

There is a silence after the footsteps cease, and she shivers involuntarily, reaching her hand out to scratch at her upper arm - itchy, itchy, always so itchy with these perfect little pills. The best kind of itchy. Still no sound. Strange, that he’d keep so quiet - but she hears the glass lifted, hears somebody swallow.

That seems strange.

With an immeasurable amount of effort, Abigail manages to half open one eye. Her vision is blurred at first, making out only the vague shape of a man, silhouetted in the window, back-lit by the weak winter sunlight.  _Like an angel, or something_ , she thinks to herself, her mind free-associating the image with the least distressing option available to her. Angels. Bloody angels fed on human flesh. Sure, why not.

But as her eyes adjust to the dim light, to the condition of being open, she begins to make out features that are unfamiliar. Not tall enough, to begin with. A different build altogether, now that she thinks about it, and she manages to force her second eyelid open, two-silhouettes blending into one as her eyesight reconfigures itself, sees Mason properly for the first time.

Not an angel, then. Or not the angel she’d been expecting. Fear kicks her in the gut, turns her stomach over in nausea, but she swallows it back down. There’s nothing she can do. She can’t run away, can’t even scream  - who will hear her? Besides, for all she knows, this man is here to help her. Hannibal said nobody knew where she was. He  _promised_  she’d be safe.

Her first impulse is to state the obvious:  _you’re not Doctor Lecter,_ but even drugged she’s not so stupid as to give away her position. It dawns on her, slowly, that this man could be FBI. He could be anybody. So she stays silent a moment, fixing him with a unsteady stare.

“…you’re taking my pills,” she says, finally. “I’d rather you didn’t”.

 

_Mason_

 

Mason doesn’t hide the smile that Abigail’s hoarse admonishment brings to his face and he turns to look at her, “Don’t worry, sweetheart, there’s plenty where these came from,” and he gives her a cheeky wink.

Abigail is not what would conventionally be called a great beauty but, Mason thinks, there is a great deal to be said for a face with such mobility and clarity of fleeting expression, the enchantingly fragile shadow-smudged skin around the hollow of her large eyes, and even the opiate haze that cloaks her movements in childlike clumsiness.

The affect she has on him is intoxicating, scenarios flash behind his eyes, memories, and half-recognised dreams welling up through the sweet, venomous chasm of his mind. His expression doesn’t change but he can feel it in his limbs, in a burgeoning of possibility in the hollow behind his sternum. Saliva floods his mouth. Mason aches for her.

He drags his gaze from her pallid, lovely face. The glass is still in his hand. There are two doors set into the wall, one must be a closet, the other is partially ajar. He crosses to it and toes it open, the light switch is easy to find. The bathroom is dingy, there are broken tiles and the mirror is cracked and spotted, but the light is a bright new bulb and everything has been freshly scrubbed and still smells faintly of lemon and bleach. When he tries the tap the water runs clear right away and he refills the glass.

Mason meets his own eyes in the mirror and smiles, a jagged, toothy, feral smile. He rubs his face. The soft leather of his gloves against his lips, his cheeks, soothes away the expression. When he feels like he has complete control over himself he takes the water glass and goes back into the bedroom.

“How are you feeling?” he says as he sets the glass down again, “I didn’t expect you to be awake just yet – are you cold, sweetheart?” he peels off his gloves and leans down to feel her forehead.

 

_Abigail_

 

There’s something vaguely reminiscent of Hannibal about the man, in a strange way. Abigail can’t quite put her finger on it, isn’t sure whether it’s just the drugs talking, but he has an easy manner about him, a comfortable sort of casualness that makes her feel instantly at ease. He almost seems familiar, though she knows she’s never seen him before. Or has she? Perhaps he has been here the whole time, bringing her things, tending to her when Dr. Lecter cannot. It’s not impossible.  
  
She watches him as he disappears into the bathroom, filling her water glass for her. The act of forcing her eyes open seems to have been enough, for now, to shake off some of the heavier effects of the drugs, and though she still feels drowsy and lethargic, still feels that gentle pulsing of incoherent pleasure, she no longer feels as though she needs to give in to sleep. She studies him, head tilted to one side on the pillows, in a manner that might be considered comical, given the heavy bandaging on the right side of her head. She keeps forgetting about the sticky wet hole where her ear used to be - so easy to disregard it, without the pain. And she hasn’t had the opportunity to look in the mirror recently. Absently, she touches her fingertips to the gauze, relieved when they come away dry and clean.  
  
Someone has to have been changing the dressing, and there’s no immediate reason to suppose that this stranger, so calm and self-assured, hasn’t been the one doing it. He’s well dressed, perhaps in his late twenties - attractive, too, she can’t help but notice - that well-groomed, manicured look favored by the social elite. He seems to be familiar with the room, and evidently familiar enough with the house to have found it and gained access. She can’t believe Hannibal would have left the home unsecured. By deduction alone, it’s safe to assume he’s here by design, not by accident.   
  
The fear that had previously been flaring up in the pit of her stomach is soothed, overtaken by an overwhelming sense of relief. She hadn’t realized how lonely she’d been, how much she’d missed seeing another human face.  
  
Nevertheless, she tenses a little as he reaches out to touch her. For a brief, fleeting moment, something about the situation feels intrinsically  _wrong._  Trauma will do that, she supposes. It’s no longer easy to trust the hands of men.  
  
She smiles to herself as she experiences the bizarre sensation of relief at not being immediately strangled, slashed, gouged, or cut. Idly, she wonders how many hundreds of years of therapy she’s going to need to overcome the last 18 months.  
  
His cool skin feels good on her forehead.   
  
“I think I still have a fever…” she frowns as she tries to remember, little snatches of a conversation returning to her - a few hours ago? A few days? “…Dr. Lecter said the infection would take a while to heal. I don’t…” she pauses, her frown deepening “…I don’t know how long I’ve been here…”   
  
She looks up at him, eyes wide and serious, her lips slightly parted in an expression of confusion and concern.

“…you didn’t tell me who you are” she states, blankly.

 

_Mason_

 

The moment of naked fear that flickers in Abigail’s eyes as he reaches for her settles like a coal deep in Mason’s belly. He has to resist the urge to feed the flame, to stoke her fear. He can’t help but imagine her, already so skittish to touch, as his hand closes on her throat, as he holds her down while she struggles against him.

He doubts that her daddy ever let boys near her, he wonders if she’d squeal, or if she’d just watch him with those wide blue eyes, silent and bloodless white. Maybe Dr. Lecter had been her daddy too – Mason couldn’t think of many other reasons to keep her, what with the whole circus being played out back in Baltimore. For all that trouble the good doctor must have been having his bit of fun, the thought makes Mason a little breathless.

Her forehead is hot on his chilled fingertips “I suppose I’ve gotten ahead of myself, Abigail, my name’s Mason,” he runs his fingers through her thick hair, then gently untangles himself and straightens. The texture of her skin and hair sparks through his nerves. The sensation is strangely lingering and diffuse and he realises that the little pop of fentanyl is finally working through him, loosening him up and stretching out his nerves into the space around him. He shakes his head to clear it and smiles a slow, sweet smile, one of his very best.

“You’re a little warm,” he tells her, “I guess some Tylenol wouldn’t do too much harm. You’d better drink some water too – I’ll be back in a second.”

He slips out of the room and pulls the door to, though he doesn’t bother to latch it. Out in the hall the driver is waiting, exactly where Mason had left him. Mason tells him to go out to the car and fetch the first aid kit, then takes out his phone and calls Barrett.

“ _Sir,"_ Barrett yelps, ” _I’ve had some leads on the New York business, there’s a–“_

"Forget New York,” Mason says evenly, “I need you to book a hotel in Montpelier – something nice, not like that shithole you stuck me in last time. And I’ll need fentanyl, sterile dressings and bandages, and probably some antiseptic ointments.”

On the other end of the line there is the kind of hollow quiet that signifies someone silently losing their shit, and what could have been  _‘Oh my god’_  as heard through a phone being muffled, then “ _Sir, if you want opiates then maybe heroin would be–”_

“If I wanted heroin then I'd  _ask for fucking heroin,”_ Mason snaps, “I want fentanyl, plenty of it, and I want you to stop asking fucking questions.”

There is a babble of what could be apologies as Mason ends the call. The driver is already beside him, holding the first aid kit. Mason takes it, puts his phone away and heads back into the bedroom.

He puts the kit on the foot of the bed and starts rummaging through it for the Tylenol, “I bet this place isn’t doing you much good,” he says, as he finds the pills, “I don’t think he ever meant for you to stay here this long, you know?”

Mason tosses the foil sheet over to Abigail to take what she wants and leans on the bedpost beside him, “I can organise a hotel room, if you feel well enough to move.”

 

_Abigail_

 

The sensation of his fingers through her hair feels amplified, as if her body, in its half-dream state, had forgotten how it felt to be touched. It’s the fentanyl as well, of course, making every hair on the back of her neck stand up as he strokes his hand through her thick hair, curling it briefly before he straightens up and releases her. She stares at him, woozy and uncertain how to react, given the disparate messages from her mind and her body. Had it always felt so good to have someone stroke her hair? She remembers her father doing it, how he’d linger over her, cautioning not to cut it, never to cut it, so beautiful, so thick and dark. Hard to separate mind and body now, the drugs conspiring against her to combine the two in ways that are making her start to feel a little bit uncomfortable. She whets her lips, taking chapped and brittle skin between her teeth for a split second before tugging on it, a small bead of blood forming, and then letting it go.  
  
Yes, consciousness was a lot more complex than sleep.  
  
She watches him leave the room, and allows herself a moment of private contemplation - one which she attempts to direct toward the intellectual ( _who exactly is he, in relation to Dr. Lecter? How long has she been here? What happened to Will Graham?_ ) - but which quickly derails into more stream-of-consciousness memories, blended with current illogical and frankly inappropriate desires. Her pale skin colours pink as she recalls certain moments…some of them vividly, unquestionably remembered, others a little more hazy. She knows what happened with her father. With Hannibal, though… - with Hannibal, things become indistinct.   
  
She can hear him in the hallway, talking to someone, but a combination of the bandages and the mostly-closed door prevent her from making out anything of the conversation. It’s not Dr. Lecter, she knows that much. She knows that he would have come here himself, if he were able. Wouldn’t he?  
  
What she can tell, from the shifting of registers, from the change in the tone of his voice, is that he’s not entirely happy with whomever he’s speaking to. She tries to breathe more quietly, to listen more intently, but there’s a soft ringing in her ear that seems to grow louder the more she concentrates on the sound of Mason’s voice. She frowns, shimmying back to sit up a little more fully in the bed.

By the time he enters the room again, she’s organized her expression back into one of wide-eyed curiosity. Well, he’s returned with a first aid kit rather than a kitchen knife, at least. Small mercies. It’s remarkable how her nervous system prepares itself for the shock of betrayal now, every time someone enters a room, every time she looks away. Even in the most incidental of circumstances.

She picks up the Tylenol and pops two into her mouth, reaching for a swallow of water. She’s being silly after all - this quasi-panicked state, causing her to question and second guess everything. He’s just a nice young man, some friend of Dr. Lecter’s, ready with medicine and water and soft touches to her forehead. Nothing sinister in that.  
  
And then he says it.  
  
_I don’t think he ever meant for you to stay here this long, you know?_

He makes it seem casual, of course. And it’s a good suggestion. This house is old, dusty, damp, cold. It can’t be doing anything to further the healing process, and besides which, she’s bored and lonely and weirdly,  _almost instinctively_ , wants to go along with whatever he suggests. But there’s something very purposeful about the way he chooses those words, and even through the cloud of euphoria they strike her as strange.   
  
If Hannibal hadn’t meant for her to be somewhere, well, she simply wouldn’t still be there. That was how it worked.   
  
She tries to clear her head, tries to choose her next words in a similarly careful fashion, but it’s difficult to ignore what her body, the current dominant force, wants - and what her body wants is to be warm, to be safe, to continue to feel the sweet and heavy throb of fentanyl. What her body wants is to find out what happens next.  
  
“Is that what Dr. Lecter wants?” she means for it to come out confident, pointed, but instead she just sounds wary. She takes in a deep breath, sucking on her bleeding lower lip. “It’s just he never said…I mean, I don’t think he said anything about it to me…”

 

_Mason_

 

She’s sounding him for information and this is it, this is the moment where he has to shine or it will all fall apart, “Oh sweetheart, no,” he says, he meets her eyes and aims for the crack belied by the quaver in her voice, “I’m so sorry, god, I shouldn’t have said anything – I don’t want you to worry, Abigail.”

Mason slips around to the bedside and kneels so that he’s looking up at her, he cradles one of her hands in his, and here it is, Mason Verger in the role of a lifetime: “Don’t worry about Baltimore, Dr. Lecter is taking care of everything, okay?”

He bites his lip and looks away, eyes watering, blinks away the sheen of tears and looks back to her to give her the most reassuring smile he can muster.

He had long ago learned that the easiest way to make someone worry was to tell them not to do it. He had also discovered that a few tears will go a long way for sympathy. His childhood was case in point, Mason had always been able to cry on cue, and his sister could hardly do it even when she was genuinely upset.

He squeezes Abigail’s hand then rubs his eyes, “Listen, we’ll stay here for a while longer – you must feel awful, I shouldn’t have suggested it. Let me tuck you in, okay?”

Internally he takes his bows and accepts his award for  _Awkward but Sincere Young Man Comforting a Girl._

 

_Abigail_

 

It is not the reaction she’s been expecting, and his sudden emotional turn causes her gut to clench uncomfortably, a sudden pang of anxiety gripping her throat. The combination of his tears and the implication that she is ignorant of something throw her sufficiently off guard that she lets down her carefully constructed defenses. Not this. Not this, again - the kind strangers. The tears. The condescending pats on the head, as they tell her about some new horrific tragedy that will irrevocably alter her life. She’s had enough of that - made her payment. Underneath the bandages, the hole in the side of her head is starting to twinge painfully. She winces, shaking her head gently as if to dissipate the discomfort, and the uncertainty she feels.

“Worry about what…?” she takes the bait completely, her mind immediately supplying a dozen of the worst case scenarios for what Mason might be referring to. What  _did_  happen in Baltimore? Is there a reason Hannibal isn’t here himself, removing her to better suited living quarters? Did something happen to him? It would be her fault. He had been trying to secure her a second chance.

Who was this man, that he would tear up at the mere thought of  _whatever_ the fuck happened in Baltimore? Someone close to Hannibal, surely. Abigail wasn’t much one for tears, had learned they were profitable only with certain kinds of people. She used them only when her other options were exhausted, or when she was completely unable to contain them. If she had to place Mason in one of the two categories, she’d bank on the latter. What would he have to gain from such a performance? The sympathy of a bed-ridden teenage girl?

No, she decides, it has overtaken him too suddenly to be artifice. He’s holding one of her pale hands in his, and his hands are warm, soft, reassuring. Reflexively, she strokes the pad of her thumb over his thumb.

_Dr. Lecter is taking care of everything._  So. He’s okay.

She has a million questions, but nothing will remain still in her mind long enough for her to pin it down. Perhaps they still suspect her - perhaps Hannibal’s ploy to “uncover” part of her body and attribute it to the Chesapeake Ripper was unsuccessful. Worse, perhaps they do suspect him.

And Will Graham. What happened to Will?

“No, wait…” she grips hold of his hand a little tighter, wanting to keep him where he is, stop him from leaving her. He might, after all; give her everything she needs for another 72 hours and leave her in this place, with the cold and the damp and the low creak and strain of the wooden rafters. She can’t bear it.

“If he’s…” she tries to correct her breathing, to assuage her anxiety. The pain in her head is really kicking up a notch now, and her expression tightens with each new sharp pulse. “Something happened in Baltimore, and it’s obviously bad enough that he can’t be here himself…” she looks to Mason for an expression of confirmation before going on “I can move. I want to move. I don’t want to stay here anymore, if it isn’t safe…”

 

_Mason_

 

The stroke of her thumb over his sends a spark down Mason’s spine to mingle with the liquid heat that spreads in him as her pain becomes more pronounced, he bites his lip and drops his eyes to look at their hands where they are clasped on top of the blankets, where she clings to him.

He wants to watch her be overcome with the pain but ultimately it will be better for him if she stays doped and placid and  _so_  so very pliable. But temptation is almost impossible to resist and he pretends he hasn’t noticed, he drinks up her winces and the downturn of her mouth.

“Oh god, I shouldn’t have said anything,” he says, “Listen, I know your imagination is probably running away with you right now, I’m going to tell you what’s happened but I need you to trust that Dr. Lecter can take care of everything, okay?”

Mason relishes the strength of her grip on him and has to tamp down his anticipation for her next reaction. He has some grasp on what Abigail’s place was in the clusterfuck that Dr. Lecter’s social circle has become, but if his next stab hits home he will have a far more coherent view, and possibly new avenues to explore.

“You’ve been declared dead, Abigail. The FBI have arrested Will Graham for your murder. Dr. Lecter can help exonerate him, but only as long as the FBI trust him – if it comes out that he had something to do with your disappearance, with manufacturing false evidence, then we’ll all be sunk.”

He takes one hand back and rubs his eyes again, “Freddie Lounds is having a field day already, she’s gunning for Graham but I don’t think she’d be above taking down Dr. Lecter and everyone around him too if it would stack for her pay day. As long as you’re out of the picture, Dr. Lecter can work the FBI, but he needs someone to look out for you while he can’t, Abigail.”

He takes a deep breath and meets her eyes again, “I’m sorry, you’re in pain – you should take some more pills. Take your time. This is a lot to deal with right now.”

 

_Abigail_

 

Abigail’s face crumples instantly, a mixture of shock, anxiety and pain - both physical and emotional, since every new word he utters seems to send a fresh fiery stab through the right side of her head. Instinctively, she pulls one of her hands away and touches it to the place where her ear used to be, wincing anew as even the light pressure of her fingertips sends a rocket of pain shooting out through the entire right side of her body. Her lips break apart as she struggles to suppress her emotions, her eyes suddenly hot and pickling with tears. So much for being in control. It’s too much to hear, too much on top of everything else she’s had to deal with, and the last sweet throbs of fentanyl aren’t enough to cushion the blow. She pulls away her other hand, pressing both sets of fingers to her eyes, trying to rub away the threat of tears. She pulls her hands up through her hair, breathing out raggedly as she lets go of a breath she wasn’t aware she’d been holding.

It doesn’t occur to her, this time, not to believe him. It all makes perfect sense. It fits with what she remembers, what she knows. She’s been declared dead. Sure, alright. That was part of the plan - that her death be pinned on the Chesapeake Ripper. But why Will? He was unstable, certainly - she knew that people, particularly people like Freddie Loundes, had their doubts about his unique ability to empathize with serial killers. But Hannibal had never doubted him. Nor had her psychiatrist, Doctor Bloom. How had this happened?

“I don’t understand…” her voice came out cracked and wavering, her bottom lip trembling as she spoke. “Why would they arrest Will Graham? He didn’t - he’s not –” she trails off, words cut short by a new burst of pain to her. She pulls her legs up under her chin, wrapping her arms around herself tightly as she closes her eyes, her face contorting in pain.

_Will Graham is not the Chesapeake Ripper,_ she thinks, silently, but doesn’t say. _Hannibal is._

 

_Mason_

 

The synergy of pain and grief as Abigail breaks down is exquisite. As she curls into a defensive ball Mason moves up to sit on the edge of the bed beside her and clasps her elbow, he runs his hand up her arm to her shoulder. The touch is strictly platonic, comforting even.

He feeds her more pills and helps her drink the last of the water, rubbing her back in broad, gentle strokes.

Will Graham has been somewhat of a phantom in Mason’s understanding of Dr. Lecter’s life. Aside from gossip and what he’s read in the tabloid news he has been able to find very little to go on, though he has made some educated guesses, and Abigail’s devastation over the news of his arrest has filled in more of the blanks.

This is the kind of game that Mason lives for; crawling into the fault lines of people’s lives and  _pushing_  until things break, and Abigail has already shown that she breaks  _so_  beautifully. But it can’t go on like this if he wants to keep her for any length of time.

His posture is the insinuation of an embrace, warm and comforting, and Mason wants Abigail to sink into his arms and lay her head on his chest and sob her little heart out. He wants her tears to soak into the fine cotton of his shirt.

He wants to wear the stain of her distress.

“Sweetheart,” he says softly, “They know he took you to Minnesota.”

 

_Abigail_

 

She’s too vulnerable not to do exactly what he wants, too thrown off course by the news of Will’s arrest to keep her walls up. His touch is comforting, and in this moment she forgets that she’s only known him half an hour, and allows herself to fall into him, her head resting just under his chin as the tears well up in her eyes. She’s positioned herself at the wrong angle, and her bandaged wound presses hard against his chest, causing a fresh blossom of agony. She bites down hard on her lip, curls her fingers into the material of his shirt to try and manage the pain.

“But they…that doesn’t prove anything, does it?” her voice comes out muffled, weak, the voice of a traumatized little girl “They don’t have a body. They don’t have any evidence…”

She trails off.

_They don’t have a body…_

Why had Hannibal needed to take her ear? It had all seemed strangely reasonable at the time - she’d been so relieved that he wasn’t going to kill her, even as she struggled against his grip, struggled to fight of the inevitable. She’d known he was doing it for her own good. And he’d made it as painless as possible, injecting her with an anesthetic, allowing her to rest in his arms after the surgery was complete, much as she was resting in Mason’s now. It had seemed, through the cocktail of drugs he’d given her, like such a noble, benevolent thing. She’d never thought to question why an ear, why take any body part at all. Wouldn’t her disappearance be enough?

Not if you wanted to plant a body part on someone else.

But surely that wasn’t what had happened. It was too obscene.

“Oh, God…” the tears are coming now, spilling down her cheeks as her small frame shakes with adrenaline, anxiety. She wants the medication to wash over her again, to take away this horrific dirty feeling that’s overtaking her body, the sensation of being unclean, damaged, marked for destruction. Why do these things keep happening to her? Is it some sort of cosmic punishment for what she did to those girls, to Nicholas Boyle? She clutches tighter to Mason’s chest.  
  
“He…” it’s too hard to say out loud, too difficult to verbalize. She knows she sounds crazy, but the words come tumbling out. “He did something with my ear, didn’t he…”

 

_Mason_

Mason’s whole body flushes as she crushes herself against him, he wraps his arms around her and tries to control the quiver of pleasure that grips him, even as he runs his hands over her, feels the delicate knobs of her spine, cups the angle of her shoulder blade and feels the heavy silk of her hair fall across his wrist and the back of his hand.

His nerves are on fire and it’s all he can do to murmur empty, soothing noises while she cries. Her face and her divine wound pressed against his heart, her hands clutching his shirt, brushing against his sides. He wants to take her before she realises what’s happening, hold her down and let her bite the meat of his palm as he covers her mouth, let her claw at his face with her fever-weak hands while he tears off her bandage and feasts on what has been done to her, what he could do to her.

Instead he presses his mouth against the crown of her head and rocks her gently, humming the way his nanny used to when he had had a nightmare.

The thought of telling Abigail what was done with her ear appeals immediately; he very much wants to know how she will react to a part of her having been  _inside_  Will Graham, whether she will feel his mouth on the ghost of her missing piece, whether she would revile Hannibal Lecter for his betrayal.

But at the same time a part of him whispers that that would be a  _waste_.

_Wouldn’t it be better,_  he thinks,  _to save that little morsel for when she thinks she’s heard everything? When she thinks that there’s nothing left to unearth, no greater depth to sink to?_

There’s no need to push her now when she’s already exactly where he wants her, and there’s so much more fun to be had, and so he soothes her, he won’t lie to her, well not really. But there’s no need to tell her the whole truth.

“The way they see it,” he says, resting his cheek against her hair, “Is that a man took a young girl back to her home and murdered her the way that the killer riding shotgun in his head had wanted to do. This killer, they never found any of the girls he killed. This girl, they only found a scrap.”

Her tears are making his shirt cling to his skin, he breathes in the scent of her, the musk of unwashed hair and the tang of antiseptic, and he wants more, oh he wants  _all_  of her.

 

_Abigail_

 

So it was enough that Will had been having a very public, very messy breakdown. That, and the circumstances of her disappearance, had been enough to incriminate him. She feels the terrible weight of guilt descend on her, acting on her almost as a physical force, pushing her to curl up tighter, press even closer to Mason.

“This is a nightmare…” she whispers, shutting her eyes tightly as if doing so might make the whole world disappear, might rewrite the narrative arc of her life into something less destructive, less immensely painful. She doesn’t understand why Hannibal would allow this happen, and she feels a sudden flash of anger and resentment: what kind of person uses someone’s life to buy back another? Even if it isn’t strictly his fault, he has allowed it to happen. He could have spoken up. Could have defended Will.

_But that would have brought down the whole house of cards,_  she thinks to herself.  _He’s preserving himself. Why go to such lengths to save me, then sacrifice his closest friend? Why was I allowed to live?_

She had felt lucky, before. As if she were special. Now she just feels cheap. She doesn’t - can’t - understand Hannibal’s motivations, and this sudden shifting of ground makes her feel untethered, scared.

The fentanyl unfurls in her bloodstream, a kick of pleasure sufficient to calm her a little, stop her tears. Her breathing stabilizes, and she stops shaking. The pain in her head ebbs away slowly. Still, she doesn’t move. Through the gash where her ear used to be she can just barely make out the steady beat of Mason’s heart. There are too many questions, too many things she can’t yet grasp, and for this brief moment it seems like the only thing holding her together is the fact that he’s here with her.

She no longer thinks to question his presence, his motivations. Her mind simply refuses to grapple with any more darkness and pain. She wants so badly to believe that some small, good thing can happen to her. For now, Mason is fulfilling that role. She needs something - someone - to hold onto. 

“I don’t understand why he let me live,” her grip on his shirt loosens as the drugs take hold, and her fingers drop of their own accord into his lap.

 

_Mason_

 

Mason loses track of time as he holds her, feeling the sobs subside into quiet breathing, the desperate grip on his shirt relax and slip away from his sides to fall and brush against him where he’s already half-hard. His breath catches in his throat and for a second he’s reduced to points of contact and the rush of blood thundering in his head, his throat and wrists.

Careful not to jolt her, he shifts their embrace so that he can lower her back onto the pillows, supporting her head, his face buried in the crook of her neck for an aching moment, breathing her in.

He pulls himself away and stands, just looking. Her cheeks are blotched with deep pink and her eyelashes are matted with tears, her hair spread around her like a dark halo and she looks to him like the avatar of  _innocence_ , the lamb on the altar of suffering.

As he turns away the pills on the nightstand catch his eye; he dry-swallows another two and pockets the bottle.

The closet is next, it is very sparse and it only takes a few seconds for him to stuff her clothes into the small travel case stowed on the overhead shelf. He checks the medicine cabinet in the bathroom for anything that might be useful, then takes the suit case and his first aid kit and hands them out for the driver to take down to the car.

Back by Abigail’s side he reaches down to brush his thumb over her cheek, feeling the warmth of her skin. He pulls back the layers of blankets so that she won’t get tangled and his eyes catch the smooth expanse of her thighs where her nightdress has rucked up.

“Abigail, sweetheart,” he says, “can you stand up for me? Give me your hands, I’ll help you.”

 

_Abigail_

 

So pleasant to lie there and have somebody else take care of everything. She watches him move around the room through heavy lidded eyes, allowing herself to release her mind from the holding-pattern of suffering, to give herself up to the drug. Yes, everything will be okay as long as she has those little blue pills. The pills, and someone to administer them. Best not to think of loss, of blood, of human flesh and dead bodies and Will Graham left to rot in a cell somewhere. Best to live in the moment, where her body is washed with warmth and again, that gentle and exquisite itching. Through her tears, the ghost of a smile.

When he returns to her bedside, she notices a stain on his shirt where her head had rested, the sickly brownish-red of infection and blood. She puts her hand up to the side of her head again. It’s damp, sticky. Nausea rolls in her stomach, is suffocated by the painkillers.

Wriggling free of the blankets, she kneels in front of him. “…would you change this…?” she touches her dressing lightly, to indicate. “…I mean, if you don’t mind - I know it’s…”  _Disgusting. Horrific. Ugly._  She takes a breath. “Sorry about your shirt…”

 

_Mason_

 

The moment she slides to the ground in front of him crystallises as a sort of out of body experience for Mason. He sees it like a still frame, the young girl kneeling in supplication at his feet, asking for his hands on her.

He plucks the front of his shirt to see the stain for himself and manages to shrug casually, his stomach clenches and he wonders how vivid the bloom on it will look by the next time he sees his sister. He would wear this shirt for Margot’s sake now, maybe he would go to her in the night and whisper to her, tell her all the things that he had done. He can’t help the crooked smile that forms on his face, or the blush that makes his ears burn.

There are still bandages and ointment in the bathroom, it hadn’t seemed worth it to take them when he would have fresh supplies waiting at the hotel. Now he is glad of it.

He sits on the bed again with the supplies at hand beside him and steers Abigail to sit between his knees, facing away from as he unwraps her soiled bandage. When he peels away the dressing to see the wound it’s like a hot wire coils in his belly.

It is neater than he expected, two elegantly curved rows of stitches, the skin around them flecked with fresh and drying blood, shiny red and inflamed. He smooths back her hair to keep it out of the way and tilts her head so that her good ear rests on his knee.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” he says, his voice is hoarse and his ears are still burning.

With a fresh piece of gauze he dabs away the worst of the blood. Only a small section of the cut has reopened, the stitches pulled when she had pressed her head against his chest, but it has bled more than he might have guessed.

The shape of the hole that’s left is intriguing, he lingers over it as he works. He wants to lean down and put his mouth on her broken skin, taste her blood and feel the prickle of the stitches on his lips, he wants to slide his tongue into the hole.

He realises that he is breathing heavily, and is leaning down maybe a little too close to her. He tosses aside the piece of gauze and uses another to apply the ointment.

Mason doesn’t want to put the clean dressing on and hide away the wound again. Now that he’s seen it he wants to see it always, to watch the blood trickle across her fine skin instead of blooming through the obscuring bandages.

When he can’t put it off any longer he places the dressing and begins winding the clean bandage over it.

 

_Abigail_

 

It doesn’t hurt as much as she thought it might, thanks to the amount of fentanyl in her system, though the sensation of having the wound exposed to the cold air is strange, and makes her uncomfortable. The worst part is the very initial stage, when he pulls the bandages away from the partially dried blood around the abscess. It pulls at the extremely sensitive skin of the wound, and she winces, fingernails raking across the hardwood floor.

Thereafter, she feels pressure, the coolness of the ointment, but little else aside from the warmth of his breath on her exposed neck. She realizes, dimly, that she’s extremely vulnerable in this moment. To the outside observer, it would appear as if she had her head on an executioner’s block, her neck tilted at this strange angle, the blood and the wound. Odd, that she feels so comfortable with him. Had he changed the dressing before? That would account for why she trusts him, perhaps.

His lap is warm, and she feels almost comfortable in this position, despite the slight stinging as Mason dabs at the cuts. She opens her mouth against his thigh, and lets out a soft breath, her eyes closing. Everything is going to be okay. She will let Mason take her wherever he wants, and she’ll be safe, comfortable. She will have time to heal.

With the high kicking in, it’s a little difficult to discern time, but she can sense him staring at the hole for a lengthy moment. She frowns as he seems to linger there. “It’s alright, right? It’s still healing, ri-?”

He’s pressing the fresh gauze to the wound before she has time to finish her sentence.

By the time he lifts her head from his lap in order to wrap the bandages, she’s high as a kite. She watches him intently as he finishes up. His cheeks are flushed, and he seems lost in thought - or perhaps just concentrating on tucking the ends of the cotton under the wrappings, to make sure they don’t come loose.

“Thanks…” this is the closest she’s been to him since he arrived, she realises. Up close he looks a little older - no, not older…just different, somehow. Something in the eyes that she can’t put her finger on.

She realizes, too late, that she is staring at him.

“…um,” she whets her lips, still staring -  _stop staring -_ deer-in-the-headlights before her brain catches up with her body and issues the instruction to  _look the hell away._

“…I can probably walk” she answers his earlier question, eager to break the somehow awkward silence. “If you think we should go now”.

 

_Mason_

 

“All right, then – upsie daisy,” Mason stands and helps pull her to her feet and as the world sort of lurches around him he realises that the pills are a little bit more potent than he’d thought.

She’s watching him with wide, vague eyes, and it tickles him, a syrupy smile wanders across his face. Abigail’s feet are bare on the hardwood floor and she’s still only wearing a nightdress. His thoughts sort of slide through him, and he has to concentrate on his movements far more than he normally would.

There is a pair of slippers half-hidden under the bed and he scoops them out and pushes them toward Abigail. He doesn’t lose his balance, but the world sort-of swoops around him every time he moves in a not-unpleasant way.

Mason shrugs out of his fur coat and wraps it around Abigail’s shoulders. She’s swamped in the cream fur. Mason doesn’t feel cold, he doesn’t feel much of anything as he leads her to the door, down the creaking stairs and out to the car where the driver is waiting, standing ready to open the doors for them.

It feels like a few seconds are skipped because Mason’s sitting in the back seat with only a vague notion of getting into the car, his head lolls as he turns to look at Abigail, tucked in beside him with the fur coat swamping her pale form.

He can feel that he’s smiling, he can’t seem to help it. His eyelids feel so heavy and the movement of the car lulls him into a sort-of half sleep. Clumsy and warm and sinking into the soft leather of the car seat, he lets himself drift away on the gentle opiate tide.


	2. Cold Comfort

_Abigail_

 

She wakes with the inertia of the car pulling to a halt. She’s not sure how long she’s been asleep, but there’s an ache in her neck and she takes a moment to stretch, tilting her head side-to-side as she glances out the car’s tinted window.

She’s  _almost_  a little annoyed. Why hadn’t Hannibal put her here in the first place, if he was just going to have Mason move her eventually? The hotel is floodlit, illuminating it brightly, a star against the dark winter sky. It’s huge and white, the sort of colonial-style building so popular in New England, but much, much more elegant than anything she’s ever seen in person. The windows are lit with warmth, and from the brick chimneys, curls of smoke dissipate into the cold night air. To Abigail, after two weeks in a damp, tumble-down manor house with peeling wallpaper and questionable central heating, it might as well be a palace.

She’s still high, so they can’t have been traveling terribly long - high enough that the check-in procedure is something of a blur. She’s only able to focus on fleeting details: the crunch of the snow under her slippers as they walk (more accurately, in her case at least, stumble) up the granite steps; the stark white teeth of the doorman, whose smile looks somehow predatory; in the lobby, thick flames lapping at the grate of the fire, the muted hum of conversations between strangers. She watches, dazed, as Mason completes the necessary paperwork to pick up the room key. The man at the front desk is older, reminds her somewhat of her father, although her father never wore a suit, and made a point never to call anyone  _sir._ She wonders what this man is thinking, as he checks them in. That they’re siblings? Lovers? Unlike Dr. Lecter, Mason’s not old enough to be her father.

She must look silly, standing there in a floor-length white fur coat and slippers, the side of her head bandaged. For the first time, she starts to feel a little paranoid. What if somebody were to recognise her? Had her photograph been printed in the newspaper, aired on TV? She was fairly certain those things must have been suppressed by the FBI, at least before she ‘died’. She was a minor involved in a major criminal investigation, after all. Tattlecrime hardly counted: she doubted Freddie Loundes’ readership was quite as extensive as the reporter herself seemed to imagine. But now she was legally dead, surely there would be nothing stopping the networks from running her picture - and the pictures of all the girls just like her,  _the girls she’d helped kill._

She swayed a little, on the spot, suddenly dizzy. An off-the-books FBI agent arrested in conjunction with the murder and mutilation of five people, including herself. Had to be a pretty big story. And she’s wandering around in a pimp coat with a fucked up ear. Great.

But if the concierge notices anything odd or unusual about her (and he  _must -_ how could he not?) he doesn’t say. He smiles neutrally at the vacant space between Mason and Abigail, making direct eye-contact with neither of them as he hands over the keys. That’s what you pay for in places like this, she supposes. Privacy.

Her heart’s still hammering against her ribs as they enter the lift, heading for the top floor. She lets out a shaky breath, huddling inside the coat.

“…do you think they’re looking for me?” she asks Mason, quietly. “I mean, if someone sees me…do you think they’d recognise me?”

 

_Mason_

 

Mason wakes up with a crick in his neck and a headache lodged behind his eyes. He feels dehydrated and disorientated and when he sees the yokel-chic bullshit hotel that Barrett has booked him he’s pissed off as well.

The pleasant wash of the fentanyl has turned into a sort of rolling nausea, he tries to ignore it, tries to walk as smoothly as he can into the hotel lobby with his limbs feeling like they’re a few seconds out of sync with his brain. He lets Abigail follow on her own and leaves the driver to deal with their luggage.

Checking in is excruciating, Mason’s eyes smart under the overhead lights, but at the very least the concierge has the sense to see that he’s not in the mood to fuck around.

In the lift he angles his shoulders into the corner and leans against the walls, he closes his eyes and presses his thumb above the bridge of his nose to try and ease the headache, but it does nothing.

He blinks at Abigail, looking wan and sickly under the lights, and it takes him a moment to understand what she’s said. He tries smiling for her, but he knows as he does that it must look more like a grimace.

“You’re yesterday’s news, sweetheart,” he says, closing his eyes again, “just another name on a list. No-one’s looking for you, and if they were they wouldn’t be looking here.”

When they get into the room Mason knocks back three fingers of the complimentary scotch to take the edge off his headache, tells Abigail to order room service if she’s hungry and crashes, face-down and fully clothed on the bed.

 

_Abigail_

 

He’s significantly less pleasant now that they’re at the hotel, she notices. But then again, it’s been a long, weird day. She doesn’t blame him for feeling a little off - she does, too, the build-up of opiates in her system making her feel dislocated, strange, a little nauseous.

At least he doesn’t think there’s anyone looking for her. It’s a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. It’s odd how she’s placed her full confidence in him in such a small space of time, but it’s hard not to. He’s well dressed, well mannered, confident. He practically oozes charisma. Having grown up in the same house as the biggest predator she’s likely to meet, Abigail’s capacity to detect stranger-danger is a little off.

The room is quaint, it a kitsch kind of way. The ceiling is painted a dark blue with small LED lights inlaid to look like the night sky. The furnishings are all pseudo-crude, fashioned out of wood and finely polished to look rustic, but modern. There’s an open fire, just like in the lobby, and Abigail stands in front of it for a few moments, before shedding the fur coat and hanging it over the back of a chair. She feels a little flushed, still pretty light-headed, and she contemplates Mason’s offer of food.

No, she thinks. Not hungry. Not possible to be hungry, on this many drugs.

But she’s still vaguely sleepy, and it’s not until she turns around that she realizes there’s only one bed in the room. She hadn’t noticed initially, too caught up in her thoughts. She looks at him, lying face down on the bed, and feels exceedingly awkward.  What, then, they’re supposed to both sleep there? She takes her bottom lip between her teeth and worries at it, cracking the skin again, fresh blood in her mouth.

She stands there for a few minutes, silently watching him, before moving to the chair where she’d previously thrown his coat, curling up in it, knees beneath her chin. It doesn’t appear as if he wants to be bothered, and she feels far too indebted to him to try his patience just yet. Something about the whole situation is starting to feel off, and she wraps her arms around herself, hugging her thighs close to her chest. She wishes she could remember more about the past few weeks: who had fed her, clothed her, taken her to the goddamn bathroom. She doesn’t remember doing it herself, and if the level of disorientation she’s experienced tonight is anything to go by, there’s no way she’d have been able to accomplish it alone. Was it Mason? Her cheeks flush again, and she closes her eyes, wishing she was invisible, wishing she was just about anywhere else. Everything feels wrong, strange, disconnected, and she half wishes she was back where Dr. Lecter had left her. At least then she’d known her role: to lie there, to be unconscious, a good little invalid. Here, the territory is uncharted. She sighs heavily, hoping the drugs will lull her back to sleep but knowing instinctively that their effects are wearing off.

 

_Mason_

 

Mason wakes up with his cheek sticky with drool and a sort of immense clarity that can only mean it’s some ungodly hour of the morning and his system has worked through whatever had upset it.

In the near-dark of the room he manages to find where his clothes have been stored and pull out a pair of pyjama pants. He only stubs his toe once as he navigates to the bathroom.

He drinks directly from the faucet, gulping down cool water until he needs to gasp for breath. When he changes out of his dirty clothes he realises that he’s been lying on the bottle of fentanyl that was in his pocket. He puts it on the counter and checks the cabinets – everything that he had asked for is there; bandages, gauze, antiseptic ointments, and most importantly more fentanyl. Abigail’s little bottle is almost empty.

When he’s finished in the bathroom he is about to go back to bed when he realises that Abigail is sitting, curled up on a chair shivering. He’s put off his stride – why would she be sitting there? It’s late and she’s obviously not been well, shouldn’t she have laid down at least?

He goes over and puts his hand on her knee, “Hey why are you still up? What’s the matter? Is your head hurting?”

 

_Abigail_

 

Abigail jolts to. She hasn’t exactly been sleeping, but she’d nodded off in the chair, half-in half-out of consciousness. She hadn’t noticed Mason getting up, and having him suddenly there in front of her is startling. She stares up at him, confused and disoriented.

“I…” her head hurts, again. She must have been resting on her wound. She frowns, trying to unscramble her brain, to remember the last few hours. They had been at the house. And then he’d brought her here. And she’d passed in the chair, because…

Oh. Right.

She swallows awkwardly, dropping her eyes to the floor. “…it hurts a little,” she admits, not really wanting to bring up the real reason she’d elected not to lie down and go the fuck to sleep. It’s ridiculous, really. It’s just a bed. He’ll think she’s stupid, childish.

But she’s never really shared a bed with anyone before - not since she was a little girl, sleeping in between her parents when she had nightmares. Her father made pretty damn sure she didn’t have any close friends, particularly close male friends. Sleepovers, of any kind, were…not a thing. She glances from Mason to the bed, and shrugs.

“I guess I’m just…not really tired” she lies, unconvincingly. The truth is, she’d given anything to lie down and stretch out. Her muscles are cramped from hunching over in the chair, from the hours they spent in the car. She knows he’s not going to buy the excuse, and anyway, what choice does she really have? Is she planning on staying in the chair forever? She curls her toes into the edges of the chair’s seat, feeling intensely uncomfortable.

 

_Mason_

 

Abigail looks very small and  _very_  young. Despite himself, Mason is very sleepy. She’s obviously lying and he can’t figure out why – he had expected her to fall into bed and sleep right away, the amount of fentanyl that must have been in her system.

He scratches the back of his neck and peers into the darkness that has turned the rest of the room into a charcoal etching.

“There’s only one bed?” Mason is honestly surprised, though now that he thinks about it he is rather glad that someone along the way has fucked up, “Oh,” he says, and a little redundantly, “there’s only one bed.”

He pulls her up out of the seat and into the bathroom, “Your pills are in here,” he shows her the cabinet, one arm casually around her trembling shoulders, her bare arm brushes against his side and he shivers. He looks at them both reflected in the mirror; their eyes look very dark, deeply shadowed by the lights overhead.

“I guess it’s too late to do anything about the room now,” he shrugs, “Don’t worry, I used to share with my sister all the time – I promise I won’t kick in my sleep.”

He slips out to the wardrobe and hands a clean nightdress in to her.

“You should at least try to sleep, otherwise you won’t get any better, will you?” he flashes her a smile and a wink and closes the bathroom door, then pads over to the bed and crawls under the covers.

Now that he’s back in bed he doesn’t feel very much like sleeping.

 

_Abigail_

 

It’s the first time she’s seen herself since the surgery. Mutilation. Whatever it was - she’s not sure, anymore. She stares at her reflection, barely even noticing that Mason’s arm is draped over her shoulders. Her attention is fixed on her face, on her head, the flatness where there should be an ear. It’s bulky now, of course, with the gauze and the bandages, but she can only imagine what it looks like with the dressing off. She looks tired. Sickly. She’s lost weight, too, and it shows in the way her hipbones protrude through the material of her nightdress, in the hollows of her clavicle. Instinctively, she reaches up to trace the deep scar that runs across her neck. In this light, it’s particularly pronounced, a purpleish band against her pale skin. _I am a site of violence_ , she thinks.  _Is everyone I love going to leave a mark on me?_

As she fingers the scar, her fingertips brush Mason’s hand, and she’s brought back to herself, back to the moment.

“Oh, right,” she’s only half been listening to him, too preoccupied with her appearance, with how small and fragile and broken she looks. She smiles, but its forced. “Sure, of course. It’s fine”.

When he leaves the room, she snibs the lock, her hand lingering on the knob for a moment. Habit, she supposes. It’s not like she really thinks he’s going to come in here while she’s changing.

She turns away from the mirror to change, not wanting to look at herself more than is strictly necessary. Her skin under the fluorescent lights looks almost bruised, deep blue veins spidering so close to the surface of her skin that it’s hard not to consider how easy it would be to open them up. But it’s only a fleeting thought, passing half-formed through her mind. She kicks the old nightdress to the corner of the room and pulls on the clean one, hesitating for a moment over her underwear. She’s sure as hell not going out there to ask if there happened to be any clean pairs amongst the things he packed up, but god knows how long she’s been wearing the old pair. She fidgets uncomfortably, tugging on the hem of the sleep shirt before rolling her eyes at herself. She’s being ridiculous, and she knows it. She reaches up under the fabric, wriggles out of her panties and kicks them into the corner with the soiled nightwear. She’ll figure it out tomorrow. For now, he’s right. She needs to sleep.

Before she leaves the bathroom, she takes two more fentanyl. The pain isn’t pronounced yet, more of a dim threat, but she’s anxious and she wants to sleep well.

She leaves the light on and the bathroom door ajar, to better pick her way across the dark room and into bed. Mason’s on the left side, curled up under the blankets and still. She still feels horribly awkward, but there’s nothing to be done about it. She pulls back the covers on the right side and wriggles in next to him. Thank Christ it’s an ultra king. Mason might have a sister, might be okay with sharing beds, but the last person she slept besides was her father, and even then, it was in a tent on one of their hunting trips. Not like this. This just felt weird.

She’s not prepared to acknowledge to herself that part of the reason it feels so weird is because she’s nervous. As if there’s anything to be nervous about. She lies on her side, facing the wall, wondering what it must be like to be a normal, healthy teenage girl. If any one of her former friends were in her shoes right now, she was sure they’d be behaving quite differently.

Of course, she doesn’t have any friends. Dr. Lecter impaled the last one on a set of antlers.

She lies very still, trying to regulate her breathing, to make as little sound as possible.

 

_Mason_

 

Mason lies still and watches through his eyelashes as she comes out of the bathroom, haloed by the light. The new sleep shirt she’s wearing is much shorter than the nightdress; he can see the whole length of her coltish legs. His breath catches when she tugs the hem of it lower. She’s nervous. Oh god.

He can lie still and regulate his breathing; he’s already lying closer to the middle of the bed than the side. He watches her hesitate as she pulls the blankets back, the way she eyes him warily, and then an awkward little hop with one hand holding the hem of her shirt.

But why?

He considers the movement as she arranges herself, so very far away and yet within reach. A hop, knees together, though the bed is high enough that the movement is difficult. One hand holding the hem of the shirt down, knees together. A lot of young girls are  _very_ embarrassed to let people see them, but this seems a little too protective, even so.

He can feel her trembling and he’s more and more certain that it is not because she is cold. He turns onto his back and manages to edge slightly closer to her.

Knees together, hem down. It worries at his mind. It doesn’t quite seem to fit, the shirt is short, but it’s not that short, and if she had just hopped up quickly then anything he possibly could have seen would have been covered by her panties.

Slowly, he spreads himself to take up more space, not touching, he doesn’t want to scare her just yet, but just close enough to feel her body heat, that if she moves at all she’ll roll onto him and then – well, how will she react to  _that_? Would she apologise? Would she pull him closer?

It’s warm in the room, though it’s large, the fire burnt down to embers. With practiced sleep-slow movements he pushes the blanket down off himself, he’s bare to the waist, and it’s a relief to have the air on his skin. His eyes are adjusting to the dark and he can see the outline of his own arm, the faint gloss of her hair.

Knees together, one hand on the hem, bare to the waist … oh dear god in heaven.

Knowing sends a white hot bolt down his spine, he can feel the warmth of her down one side and he’s suddenly achingly hard. His mouth falls open, he could touch himself under the blankets with her so close beside him, try to stay quiet. He could pull her closer, set his teeth against her neck and push her onto him.

Heat rushes through him, he must be red all over, she’s so close and there’s nothing between them.

 

_Abigail_

 

Her eyes are slowly adjusting to the darkness. She can make out the shapes of the furniture now, the faint rectangle of moonlight seeping in from around the edges of the black-out curtains. The digital clock on the bedside table is flashing 3:00AM, and she’s already feeling the first soft swell of the opiates in her system, the warm, fluttering sensation starting in her chest and throbbing outward, through shoulders, neck, head, down the lengths of her arms and lower, her stomach, lower still, the tops of her thighs, lower…

It’s easier not to care, as the drugs take hold, but impossible not to notice. She presses her legs together, skin on skin, and hopes to god her breathing, which feels impossibly heavy, isn’t actually as loud as she thinks it is. She keeps her eyes open, staring fixedly at the window, silently praying that the fentanyl will settle her, that she’ll be able to sleep. Right now, she’s painfully aware of Mason’s presence in the bed, of the weight of him next to her, the depression in the mattress, and all she can think about is the way he’d held her earlier, as she cried. All she can think about is her blood on his crisp white shirt.

Fuck, what is  _wrong_  with her? She can feel him shifting in his sleep, rolling onto his back, moving closer to her. She feels him pushing down the blankets. She wants to look at him. She doesn’t want to look at him. She wants him closer. Doesn’t want him. Does. Doesn’t.

She can feel the heat coming off his body, warmth spreading over the cool of the impossibly high thread count sheets, and shivers. He’s sleeping, isn’t he? His breathing is even, measured. He’s quiet. She shifts uncomfortably, one hand dropping to tug again at the sleep shirt, in a futile attempt to feel fabric between her legs. It’s not going to reach. She pulls her hand up again, curling it into a fist and clasping it close to her chest, almost defensively. She still can’t bring herself to close her eyes, can’t fully relax. What’s _he_  sleeping in, anyway? He was still wearing a shirt when he came into the bathroom. And now? Naked from the waist up? Naked from the waist down?

She lets out a soft hiss that’s a half-formed admonishment to herself to grow the hell up. It’s absurd of her to be thinking of anything besides how best to piece together the shattered fragments of her life, and arrogant to assume that he’s interested in anything besides making sure she’s alright. He’s doing a favor for Dr. Lecter, that’s all. The room thing? Just a mistake. Hesitantly, she closes her eyes.

 

_Mason_

 

He can hear her breathing, feel her shifting so slightly, trying to move, her breath rushes out of her in a hiss and he feels like he’s going to have a heart attack. She moves again and the blankets shift with her and pull across his belly, across his erection and he twitches convulsively.

For once he’s glad at how easily his voice breaks, all that escapes his throat is an airy moan. He covers his mouth with the back of his left hand, his right is still stretched out toward her, still close enough to touch.

He wonders about her movements before, was she touching herself? Did she think better of it and stop? Or was she still trying to hide herself, even under the covers, even in the dark?

His breath is ragged, he can’t pretend to be sleeping anymore, he stares up at the black of the ceiling, reaches out.

The back of his right hand meets what he can only guess is her hip, shrouded in the thin cloth of her night shirt, he slides his hand up, drawing a line up the side of her body, and then taking his hand back.

His tongue darts out to wet the knuckles of his left hand.

 

_Abigail_

 

She hears him first, a soft sound that she’s not entirely sure how to interpret, initially. It’s been so long she was physically close to somebody - sleeping in the same room, let alone in the same bed - that she’s not sure whether it’s just a regular sleeping-noise, the sound someone would make if they were in the midst of a particularly vivid dream. But if he’s sleeping, he’s obviously not sleeping particularly deeply, and this makes her chest tighten even more. The bed, for all its expansiveness, seems suddenly very tiny. She squints her eyes more tightly closed, tries as hard as she can to return her body to the pleasant, floaty state it had been in earlier, but she can’t seem to moderate the desperately fast beating of her heart.

_It’s nothing. It’s not anything. Be a good girl and go to sleep._

And then he touches her.

She forgets how to breathe, for a second, as he runs his hand over the swell of her hip, up to where her lower ribs begin. It’s far too controlled to be interpreted as anything other than deliberate, and there’s no denying it: he’s not asleep. And he knows she’s not, either.

What’s more, she’s not sure she wants to be, any longer. The combination of anxiety and fentanyl is making her feel weird, like perhaps this whole thing, this moment, this past day, month, year, could be a dream, or a hallucination. And there are no consequences in dreams. In dreams, nobody gets hurt.

She lets out a soft sigh as he takes his hand away, still uncertain whether it’s in protest or relief. Her mind might not be able to retrieve the answer from the swirling vortex of her thoughts, but her body knows, and its her body that scoots back just a little, enough that their lower legs are touching.

 

_Mason_

 

Her legs slide over his and a ragged breath escapes him. She’s not pretending to be asleep any more. He turns on his side again, facing her, and reaches over, he catches her thigh, just above the knee and drags his hand up feeling the soft skin, the fine, tiny hairs. His hand stops before it reaches the crease of her thigh.

There are any number of things he might do. He could hurt her, make her hate him. Make her never trust any man again. Though that seems like it would be too easy – the way has been paved by others and he’s not particularly interested in being the sloppy second in her parade of nightmares.

It is a far more delicate proposition to feed her poisoned honey, to kiss her and soothe her at the same time as he bites into her ripe flesh. Make her question what she knows of pain and pleasure. By the time she realises what he wants there would be nothing left of her.

He fits himself behind her, slips his right arm under her torso and moves her so that her back is against his chest, the curve of her backside pressing against his erection. For a second it’s too much, his fingers grip the meat of her thigh, he ducks down to press his forehead against the curve of her shoulder.

She lies so still, like a prey animal that knows it’s cornered.

He lifts his head again and takes his hand off her thigh, strokes her stomach, skims over the curve of one small, young breast and pushes the hair away from her neck.

“ _God yes …_ ” he hitches out, he thrusts against her backside, the friction from his pyjama bottoms maddening, the warmth of her and the weight of her intoxicating. He pulls her closer, one hand on the bone of her hip, he lowers his open mouth to her neck and feeds on her, the lightest caresses of his lips, his questing tongue, the barest graze of teeth on the soft skin of her throat.

And that gets a reaction, he holds her closer and slips his hand up under her shirt, feels her soft belly, the sharp curve of her ribs, and comes to rest on the hard-soft point of her sternum, where he can feel her thrumming heart.

 

_Abigail_

 

It’s all happening in waves, time distorting to lengthen some moments, shorten others. She’s not sure what the cause of this is: the panic, or the drugs. It’s not that she doesn’t  _want_  him to, it’s just that she’s so completely unprepared. The last boy she had anything to do with was probably in the fourth fucking grade, and that progressed no further than a chaste kiss on the lips before her father found them and ended the play date. Thereafter he’d kept a close watch on her, and it was either that, or the fact that boys just found her too damn weird, that had kept her pretty much chaste and virginal until…

Well, she didn’t like to think about that. And even with her father, he’d never - they’d never… - not completely.

Her breath hitches as he pulls her closer to him, running his hand up her thigh. These are not entirely unfamiliar actions: it’s not as though Dr. Lecter never touched her. There were moments, moments where lines were crossed, where gestures meant to be paternal and protective became…something else. But they were so slight that one could almost have missed them - a lingering touch, a hand on her inner thigh, the way he had looked at her. Sometimes she’d even wondered if she’d been imagining it, if she’d been so conditioned to see her father figures as predatory and sexual that it was impossible not to interpret every action through the lens of abuse. Regardless, it was never like  _this._ Not with Hannibal. Not even with her father.

This is real and adult and absolutely terrifying, and part of her wants desperately to be back in that cold, empty little house, sleeping soundly and peacefully and  _alone_.

And so she remains still as he skims his hands over her stomach, her small breasts, through the flimsy cotton of the shirt. But she can’t deny that it feels good, particularly with the sensory amplification of the opiates. Her skin is practically singing, burning up wherever he touches her.

She can feel how hard he is even before he completely loses his self-control, can feel his erection straining against the fabric of his pajama pants. Is it really possible that she’s done this to him, simply by lying there and looking pale and sickly? She’s so damaged, her body so scarred. She can’t imagine why he wants her. She’s not sure why she wants  _him_ , either. A significant part of her is screaming that this is too fast, too random, too badly timed to be anything other than some fucked up game. Not for nothing did her father make her his lure: she understands human beings, as much as she needs to, and she knows a grown man doesn’t get sent to care for a sick teenage girl and then suddenly but inexplicably decide to seduce her. Maybe it’s some ploy, some test or experiment Dr. Lecter has decided to perform on her, and the thought makes her stomach turn over, half nausea half strange little thrill. Perhaps that’s how Hannibal gets off: puppeting. Watching.

Regardless, when he thrusts against her, when his mouth moves over the long, thick scar on her neck, she responds. She lets out a muted moan, back arching, body curving into his to press against his painfully hard cock. She wonders how she looks, right now - images, memories of slaughtered animals flit across her mind, a doe in its death throes, arcing and spasming. His teeth on her neck feel incredible, and she thinks of ripped throats, of blood, of how it is to watch the life drain out of another living creature.

And then he’s touching her under the material of the shirt, and she knows he can feel how frantically her heart is beating, that he must be able to sense her fear, perhaps even taste it on her skin. She makes a soft sound, something between a yelp and a sigh. She feels like she should say something, but she has no idea how to address the current situation, what words she would use.  _I’m sorry, I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t want to disappoint you. I’m scared. I’m lonely. Touch me again. Make me touch you._

Not knowing whether she means to turn towards him, or away from him, she rolls onto her back.

 

_Mason_

 

She rolls onto her back, into him and he stays as he was for a moment, teasing her neck, feeling the ridge of her scar on his lips and tongue, watching with heavy-lidded eyes as she arches, her knees fall open, trembling beyond her control.

He moves back, pulls his arm free. In the near dark her face twists and what is that – panic? Desperation?

Mason fits himself between her thighs, runs his hands from the outside of her knees up, over her hips, up to cup her shoulders, to support himself as he leans over her, they’re barely touching, just his hands on her shoulders and the hard press of his cock against her groin. She moves and he can’t help the broken sounds that fall from his lips.

He pushes himself upright, sitting back on his heels and he pulls her up just enough to tug the hem of her shirt up, to lift it, over her shoulders, up over her head, off. He tosses it aside and drinks in the sight of her, all her adolescent insecurity, her shivers and the goosebumps that race over her skin, her nipples already hard, her soft mewls and ragged breathing.

For the moment he ignores her little cunt, bends forward over her to tongue her belly button, his hands holding her sides, moving as he progresses up her body, letting her feel what he can do with his mouth, he moves slowly, his breathing fast and uneven, gusting across skin wet by his tongue, he crawls up her, mouths one breast and then the other, pulls one nipple between his teeth, but doesn’t quite bite down.

He’s been told by many people that he has a lovely mouth; women who imagine that it indicates some softness in him, that he’ll gentle them through their ecstasies without the brutality of the men they’ve grown to despise, men who want to see it stretched around their cocks, who think he’ll kneel for them, bend over for them, as placid and malleable as the girls they’re used to fucking.

She moves again and he jerks against her, “ _Oh god,"_ he moves to her throat again, leaves a lingering, sucking kiss, not quite hard enough to bruise.

He pulls back again, his hands slide back down to her hips, his nails graze over her pallid skin – his nails are long enough that he could peel her skin away in strips, the blood and tissue catching under his nails, leave her squalling while he fucks her, all gentleness gone, all teeth and nails and hard cock.

He doesn’t. Her hips buck as the points of his nails prick the full swell of her backside, he holds her still, lowers himself again, slides himself back and his cock aches as he lies on his belly, his mouth pressed against her little cunt, and rubbing against the bed is worse than not enough, it’s a tease as he tastes the bitter musk of her teenaged arousal, as he penetrates her with his tongue and feels her gasp and writhe, feels her hands tangle in his hair.

He licks over her clit and mouths it, he wonders if she’s figured that one out yet, where to touch herself, or if it’s all been furtive, desperate frotting against her pillow, he moans into her as she pulls his hair, and the pain makes him think of his sister, how she always fought back, and he can’t help the growl that rumbles from deep in his chest, he can’t help the abortive grinding jerks against the bed as she arches over him and all he can think is  _Margot, Margot, little sister_.

 

_Abigail_

 

She’s not sure what she expected him to do, exactly. Now that she reflects on it, rolling onto her back was probably a bad idea, at least if what she meant to convey was her desperate uncertainty about the situation. Rolling onto your back. It’s what animals do, when they trust you - the quickest, easiest way to render yourself completely helpless to another person. Everything is exposed - all that softness, the belly, the organs.

She swallows heavily, looking up at him. She guesses she thought he might talk to her, ask if she’s okay, if she wants him to continue, but he’s leaning over her now, hands either side of her shoulders, erection pressing hard against her exposed mound of venus. In the darkness, his face is illuminated only by the hypnotic flashing of the digital clock. He’s breathing heavily. He looks wide-eyed, intense, and she knows then that it hasn’t even occurred to him to ask her what she wants. They’re past that, now.

It should be frightening. It is, in a remote, dislocated way. But the drugs in her system and her desperate need to feel close to somebody, not to mention the sweet ache between her thighs, override the fear. She writhes beneath him as he ghosts his mouth over her body, so warm, so wet, another soft moan coaxed from her, unbidden, as he tongues at her nipple. If she wanted to stop this, could she? Would he back down, all polite apologies?

She doesn’t have time to fully contemplate the question, train of thought interrupted by the raking of nails down her sides. The perfect meshing of pleasure and pain is too much, and she gasps, back arching up off the bed as he drops his mouth to her cunt, already so wet with arousal, the insides of her thighs damp. Pointless to pretend she isn’t into this, that she doesn’t want it. No jury would convict him.

She reaches up, tangles her fingers in his hair - the first time she’s touched him since he started touching her. In comparison, the gesture seems so innocent, so weak, something a little girl would do. She clutches tighter, not wanting to seem awkward or inexperienced, unaware that it’s both of these qualities that are making this such a turn on for him.

And then he’s licking her  _there_ , the tender spot where she touches herself, and its almost too much. She’s thought about this before, of course - how it would feel to have someone go down on her. Most recently, the thoughts have been attached to Dr. Lecter - unintentional fantasies creeping stealthy into her mind as she ran her hands over herself, in the shower. She always feels embarrassed, stops halfway through, ashamed. When she gets herself off, it has to be with a clear, empty mind. How else can you make a dirty thing pure?

Her clit throbs as he tongues it. “ _Fuck_ ,” she hisses, raking her nails down his upper back, mimicking him, doing what she knows she’s supposed to do: take cues; follow his lead; be compliant. She wants to do something strong, something powerful - to be like the girls in the videos her father used to make her watch, all deceptive innocence. Even when they were being fucked, those girls seemed to have some measure of control: they knew what they were doing, and no amount of airbrushing and baby-voices could make them seem anything other than what they were - experienced. Women, really, not girls.

She digs her nails into him again, hoping it hurts, hoping she draws blood, anything to make her feel more grounded, more in control. Again, the thought returns to her:  _what if you wanted him to stop?_

Perhaps that’s part of the reason she speaks; to test for a reaction, a weak attempt to dissuade him that even she isn’t fully committed to.

“I haven’t…” she breathes out, shakily “…you know, before. With anybody…”

 

_Mason_

 

He almost comes when she says it, loses his rhythm, the moan that escapes him sounds inhuman, and now he’s turned his face slightly, he can feel her slick cunt against the corner of his mouth, his cheek.

“ _Jesus Christ,_ ” he groans, and sucks lingeringly on her inner thigh, “Je _sus._ ”

Mason pulls himself up beside her again, and he can’t help whimpering as he moves, the front of his pyjama pants cling to his cock, sticky with pre-cum, his arms are trembling. He doesn’t touch her, they’re a hair’s breadth apart at all points but he can taste her breath, see her bedroom-dark eyes.

“ _Oh god_ ,” he says, and his words sound like sobs, “ _Oh god, you don't_ have _to.”_

She’s an orphan, he remembers, and orphans are always easier to keep, terrified of him, of what he can do, but more terrified of being left alone, being abandoned again. He’ll stop if she asks. Go to the bathroom and jerk off, share the bed and keep strictly to his side, his back to her, hands to himself.

He would go out alone and leave her to think. Get his own room. He would visit to change her dressings and make sure she’s been eating. How many days would it be before she begged him to come back? What would she let him do then?

“ _You don’t have to,”_  his voice cracks and they’re so close, their mouths almost touching, breathing each other’s air.

 

_Abigail_

 

Again, not what she’s expecting. She was certain he was going to ignore her protests, try to soothe her, convince, cajole. It would have fit with what she knows about him so far: that he is attractive, charismatic, persuasive. He’s displayed all those traits in the past thirty-six hours, and yet every time she thinks she has a handle on him, something changes, the ground shifts beneath her. First he’s gentle and emotional. Then he’s short-tempered, dismissive. Then sexually aggressive. And now he’s…willing to back off? It doesn’t add up.

She knows she should feel comforted by the fact that he takes her statement as a sign to stop. It’s straight out of the sex-education and self-respect textbook: if a boy you like listens when you say “no”, he’s a keeper. But she’s having complicated feelings about it, unable to shake the sense that she’s somehow  _failed_. How hard would it have been to have lain back and let him crawl on top of her? It would have felt good. She  _wanted_  it. And there’s nothing about it that’s inherently wrong, no reason for her to feel so awkward, so ashamed. He’s not  _that_  much older than her, surely? It’s not like she’s a child: she’s certainly not her father’s property, not anymore. Nobody would care, if she did. Nobody would even know.

She doesn’t want to disappoint him. God, she doesn’t want to disappoint anybody. But she’s said it, now. There’s no taking it back. She’s outed herself as an inexperienced little girl, and when she thinks of it  _this_  way, it’s hardly surprising that he slides off her, pulling himself up beside her on the mattress.

They’re so close. Somehow, this moment feels exponentially more awkward than anything that has come before, and once again the fentanyl stretches time, drawing out the eye-contact he makes with her. Her clit’s still throbbing, keeping time with her pulse, rapid and hot and aching to take everything she just blurted out back. But she can’t - not now. She can see it in the way he looks at her, that the moment, whatever it was, is gone.

Hesitantly, she reaches out to press the palm of her hand against his bare chest. His skin is damp with sweat, and she can feel his heart beating there, heavy, rapid pulses.

He says it again: “ _you don’t have to_ ”, and she immediately wants to reassure him, to explain.

“I just, it’s…” she can’t find the words, “…I didn’t think this would happen - with you, I mean, and I just…” she trails off.

 

_Mason_

 

“It’s okay,” he puts his hand over hers where she’s pressed it against his chest, “It’s my fault,” he says and strokes her hand and lets out a long, shaky breath.

Mason relaxes so that he’s lying on his back beside her, keeping her hand on his chest, running his fingertips over it, from her wrist to the crook of her elbow and back again, lightly, as though he doesn’t realise he’s doing it, “I’m sorry,” he says, his face tucked into the curve of her neck, his cheek resting on her soft hair.

His breaths are still catching in his chest and he can’t stop his heart from racing, his pyjama pants are starting to feel very uncomfortable. He tugs the waistband with his free hand to try and ease the situation. The movement is enough that Abigail’s hand slips a little, grazes across his skin and he shivers under her touch, the hand stroking her arm stutters and then continues at the same pace.

He turns his head away from her, closes his eyes and tilts his head back, arches his back a little and sighs. “I just … I thought you might – might like … I-I’m sorry, I’m stupid, I don’t know.”

 

_Abigail_

 

God, this is painful. She closes her eyes, counts her breaths to try and calm herself. She feels awful: pathetic and ridiculous, a scared little baby who can’t make decisions for herself. Because that’s what this is, really, she realizes. Her father, whispering to her from beyond the grave, exerting control over her even now, even from so far underground. Maybe she’ll never escape him, the sick influence he’s had on her life. He’s the reason, after all, that she’s lying here  _sans ear_  in a hotel bed with a man she barely knows, after being embroiled in a high-profile criminal investigation involving the deaths of girls who looked almost exactly like her. He’s the reason she’s not going off to college, not dating boys (or hell, dating girls), making silly mistakes, drinking too much, getting into regular kinds of teenage trouble. He’s the reason she’s legally dead.  
  
For the first time since Garret Jacob Hobbs died, Abigail feels like she might actually hate him.  
  
The revelation is a sobering one, and even the drugs pumping through her bloodstream can’t soften it sufficiently, She goes quiet for a long moment, staring at the dark ceiling.   
  
“I did…- I do - like it, I mean. I…” her hand has fallen lower on his chest, and without really being aware of it, she’s moving it down, tracing lazy patterns over his stomach. “…you don’t have to be sorry.  _I’m_  sorry. I’m just…” she breaths out, heavily, feeling suddenly extremely sad. “I’m really fucked up. Maybe you already know that. I’m broken. I don’t know why I’m still alive”.

 

_Mason_

 

“Abigail, sweetheart, you can’t think like that,” he twitches under her hand, and his voice is breathier than he had intended, “suffering is … it makes us human. It’s the fire that purifies us, makes us god’s creatures.”

He closes his eyes again, arching into her touch, he needs more, wants her small hands on him, her mouth, wants her tentative, kittenish licks and the way her hair will trail after her movements, a shower of sparks across his tortured nerve-endings.

“Think about … about s-stained-glass windows, like in those old cathedrals, they’re beautiful, but they’re all made out of broken glass, and just because–” he gasps, his heels dig into the bed and his hips buck fruitlessly against the air, “– just because you can’t see the pattern now, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

Mason can see the stained glass windows clearly in his mind; the chapel of his oh-so-exclusive middle school had warped the light, made the shadows dance with depth and colour, stained his skin in red and gold and blue the first time he fucked and fucked over someone who wasn’t smaller and weaker than he was.

“And fire tempers the spirit,” he breathes, “makes us stronger, makes us –  _oh.”_

He’s struggling to hold on, he thinks he could come without her even touching his cock, he cups her cheek with one hand, pushes the other through her hair, breathless, his lips parted and his eyes heavy-lidded.

 

_Abigail_

 

Once again, her body is at odds with her mind. She’s listening to every word he says - hanging on them, almost - but she’d have to be neurally challenged not to notice how his voice hitches, how his body is responding to her touch. And this, after all, was what she wanted, before: to have some measure of control. To touch him, like he’d touched her.

She’s still nervous, but his stammering, the tremble in his voice is giving her confidence. She moves her hand lower still, fingertips tracing the waistband of his pajama pants. She’s dropped her gaze from his, can’t look at him, too shy, but she can feel him looking at her. She wonders what he sees: a girl? A woman? A child? A daughter? She has no idea what role she fills for him, and its thrilling, in a way - to be offered up a chance at something new. Perhaps this was what Hannibal had meant, when he told her she’d be able to start over. Perhaps now she could finally break the cycle, could be something other than a toy, a puppet, the bait for someone else’s trap.  
  
_Suffering makes us human. It’s the fire that purifies us, makes us god’s creatures._ He sounds like some weird hybrid of Dr. Lecter and Will Graham, and for a second she’s lost in that thought, in the idea of suffering as a form of redemption. If that’s the case, then she’s the godliest damn person she’s ever met. But it’s beautiful, what he’s saying - poetic, a way to look at her life that doesn’t involve words like “trauma” and “abuse” and “victim”.  __  
  
She opens her eyes when he takes her face in his hands. He’s looking at her hungrily, almost - there’s a depth of something in his eyes that she can’t quite figure out. She hesitates again, playing with the elastic of his waistband, tugging at it.   
  
“I just want to be safe,” she admits, small voice, all wide-eyed innocence. It’s the first time she’s articulated the desire out loud, always afraid it would make her seem weak. She lets out a small, shaky breath - so many things she wants to tell him, so many things to ask. She wonders if Hannibal has told him what happened to her, that she was the Minnesota Shrike’s lure, that she’s got blood on her hands, too. But instead, she nudges against him, her mouth finding his, her small pink tongue grazing his lower lip.

 

_Mason_

 

Every line of his body is taut enough to snap and it’s a sort of sublime torment as she tastes his lips, kisses him and he tries to meet her there but he can’t catch his breath and it’s a delicious, disjointed, open-mouthed mess.

He can feel the seam on her lip where it had split, taste the remnant of dried blood, and he thinks she must be able to taste herself on him, he jerks against her and groans like he’s wounded when her fingers dip under the waist band of his pants.

And  _oh_  she’s the lamb and the young lion, an angel limned in earthly shadows, all he can do to help her is cant his hips so she can get rid of his pants, he holds her hips, not to guide her but to ground himself as the world tilts under him, she is a beatific vision, and he can’t help the noises that spill out of him, devoured by her greedy little mouth.

_“Please,"_ is all he can manage, in the ghost of a whisper, ” _please – tell me what t-to … I want to – for you, tell me how you want –“_

 

_Abigail_

 

He’s so deliciously inarticulate, and Abigail isn’t sure quite what to do with it. Her breaths are coming in shallow and irregular, and she nips at his bottom lip, amazed at how confident she is, now. How bold.

She slides her hand down lower as he wriggles out of his pajama pants. This is the first time in months that she’s touched someone like this, and it’s impossible not to feel a little turned on by it, a little powerful. Memories of her father bubble to the surface of her mind, but she knocks them back. She doesn’t want to ruin this: there’s been plenty of time to dwell on this in the past, will be plenty of time to be anxious and traumatized in the future. For now, she wants to be normal, wants to be a regular teenage girl.

So she doesn’t think of her father, when she ducks her hand below the sculpted curve of his hip bones. She doesn’t think of her father, as she flits her fingertips over the head of his cock. She doesn’t think of her father, as she wraps her hand around him.

She drops her forehead to the crook of his neck, and nuzzles against him. “…I just want you to feel good,” she mouths against the soft skin of his neck, her breath warm, tongue wet. She kisses him there, gently. “I just want to be good at that”.

 

_Mason_

 

All the air is knocked out of him when she takes him in hand, he arches, his throat bared to her, he doesn’t know whether his eyes are open, he can’t see, can’t hear past the rush of blood in his ears, he is all sensation, all white-hot nerves.

Then she’s kissing his throat, soft, shy little butterfly kisses and her hot breath washes over him and he’s thrusting into her hand and she’s so careful with him, her hand slipping, she’s so tentative and he has one hand on the back of her neck, pulling her closer, he wants her to bite him, to bruise him, his voice has gone.

Mason wants to hurt her, he wants her to want him, he wants her to cry, those wide blue eyes, so like his sister’s, although Margot never was so gentle, never wanted to play his games. He arches again, feels her breasts pressed against his chest, and maybe her grip on him tightens, maybe the angle changes but suddenly he can’t hold out any longer.

“ _Jesus save me,"_ he chokes out and comes in hot streaks across his belly, her hand, twisting against the bedsheets, arching into her smooth little body, and all the thoughts, the desires chasing around his brain scatter and he’s lost and only anchored by the warm weight of her, the press of her lips, a fit of the giggles strikes him, still insensible, and he tries to muffle them in her hair, against her shoulder.

When he can control his limbs he pulls her to him, kisses her deeply, their bodies aligned, pressed together, he can feel the slick of his come between their bellies and when they break apart for air he catches sight of her hand, pearls of the stuff scattered across her nimble fingers. He wants to suck her fingers til they’re clean, roll her over and lick the mess off her belly. He wonders if she would think it was weird – that was what Margot always said before she learned stronger words like  _wrong_ , and  _obscene_.

Mason slips his hand between them, finds the sweet hollow between her thighs, ” _Let me help you,“_ he breathes in her ear, ” _my hands, my mouth, whatever you like – oh god, please let me,“_ it tumbles from him in a rush and he’s surprised that he can sound so desperate, so needy.

 

_Abigail_

 

He comes so quickly, and she’s surprised: she finds it hard to believe she’s  _that_  good, her touch so tentative, fumbling awkwardly with him in the darkness, as if she’s never touched anyone this way before. She has, of course, and it’s hard not to think about that as she strokes him to climax. The memories flood back no matter how hard she tries to push them away, and she’s fourteen again, her mother asleep, she and her father in the unlit living room, bathed in the glow of the television. She first few times he’d just had her sit there, watch the films with him, naked bodies writing and jerking on screen. He hadn’t even touched himself the first time: just sat there, silent, and in the darkness it was impossible to tell if he was watching them, or watching her.

And then at some stage, it changed. Progressed. He made her sit closer, put her hand in his lap.

_But that’s nothing like this_ , she tells herself, tightening her grip on his hot, damp cock, moving her fingers over it,  _this isn’t wrong like that. This is what normal people do._

And it’s all over before she can fully decide how to feel about it. She watches him as he comes, watches his expression, the way his body bucks once, twice, arching off the mattress and covering her hand and stomach in cum. She lets out a small sound, half-gasp half self-satisfied moan. It  _does_  feel powerful, to make someone yours like this. For the moment, it doesn’t occur to her that the power dynamic might be more complex, that she’s still just barely underage, that she’s drugged and vulnerable and scared, and that maybe, just maybe, Mason is taking advantage of that.

She collapses next to him, their bodies pressed together, nuzzled into the crook of his neck, her mouth on his damp skin. She kisses him there, bites down gently. He tastes salty, like sweat.

She’s surprised, again, by the fact that he’s still touching her, his hand moving between her legs, fingers teasing the still-wet folds of her pussy. She shudders, moving one leg over him to give him better access. This, too, is different: with her father, the moments after the act was completed were dense with silence, almost painfully so. He would get up immediately, leave the room. He would not look at her. And at breakfast the next morning, it would be as if nothing had happened. They never spoke of it - this unacknowledged act that, from then on, took place periodically, never with any discussion, never with any negotiation. She had come to recognize those moments as a necessary part of his impulse-management: he didn’t want to hurt her. So she had to be an object, during those tense, painful minutes: not a person, not his daughter, just a hand and a mouth, anonymous and functional.

He did love her, really. She knew that. Otherwise she wouldn’t have lived past fifteen.

Mason’s voice sounds breathy, desperate, and she runs a hand through his hair, biting down a little harder on his neck.

“Whatever you want…” she’s too nervous, too unsure to have any idea what to tell him. She’s never made the choices, in these situations - she can’t even begin to imagine what she wants, let alone how to tell him “…I just want to please you…”

 

_Mason_

 

She’s panting, whimpering against his throat as she straddles him and he strokes her, shifting the angle of his hand to find the spot that makes her jump, makes her bite down on him, “ _Yes,”_  he groans, pressing kisses to her forehead, the top of her head, wherever he can reach, his lips brush against the texture of her bandage, “ _Yes, come on, for me.”_

One of her hands tangles in his hair and he finds the other with his free hand, lifts it to his mouth. He’s sure she’s watching when he pulls her come-stained fingers into his mouth one at a time, his cheeks hollowing as he sucks them clean.

“ _Come on Abigail … bite me, hurt me, please – yes,"_ he keeps up a stream of breathless encouragements, suggestions, loving the feel of her nails in his scalp, her teeth on his throat, his shoulder, loving the feel of her falling apart over him.

He only wishes he could have used his mouth, had her brace herself against the heavy wood of the headboard and grind onto his face, wishes he could see the length of her above him, but then she might have given in to her nerves, shied away from him. When she thinks of him he wants her to think of this moment. He wants this pleasure to be twined with her perceptions of him, dulling her doubts, numbing the edges of her fear. Making her defenceless.

Mason curls one finger inside of her, still thumbing her clit, ” _Please Abigail, for me, please,“_ he had to hold Margot down to get inside her, stuff a pillow over her face to stop the screaming, and the blood, there had been so much blood and he wishes he could remember, remember exactly what he had done to make her bleed like that, but it’s just a blur of hot slick across his thighs, wrist deep in his sister and the screaming,  _oh divine,_  but muffled in the pillow, telling her to shut up, though he really wanted to hear it all.

” _Yes – for me, Abigail, come on, please.“_

 

_Abigail_

 

It doesn’t take her long before she starts feeling the tension building in the hollow of her lower stomach, and that  _is_ new. It’s always taken her forever, before - even when she’s touching herself - too much shame, too much surrendering herself to others for it to be entirely pleasurable. She’d always felt an obligation, when her father touched her: like she owed it to him to lie there, to shudder and writhe and pretend. Parts of it had felt good: she has to admit there to herself. But it had still been, in many ways, an act. Allowing her father to touch had been, in many ways, nothing more than a performance of her body, an exercise in emptying her mind.

Here, now, all of her is on fire. She feels more present within her own skin than she has in a long, long time.

She watches him as he takes her fingers in his mouth, sucking them clean, and its too much - it doesn’t occur to her to find it obscene, or weird. The bar has been set pretty high, for Abigail, when it comes to defining those terms, and in this context, his actions just serve to make the throbbing between her legs intensify.

She bucks her hips, grinding against his hand as he slips one finger inside her. She’s tight, of course - practically unused - but her cunt’s so wet that he slips in easily, and she wants more, wants all of him inside her. His thumb is working her clit hard and she moans pressing her body against his, skin on skin, sweat on sweat, sliding against each other like they were made for just this.

She does what he tells her, bites down harder on his neck - but she’s still tentative, still unsure of his limits, or hers, for that matter. Its enough to bruise, but not hard enough to really hurt. She licks the raised welt with her tongue.

She knows she’s still intact, never bled any of the times her father fumbled awkward with the outside of her, traced the outline of her sex with his shaking hands. It had always been about his pleasure, about looking at her, examining her, but never really placing his hands on her. His pleasure was always centered. Just as he’d never wanted to kill her, Garret Jacob Hobbs had never wanted to  _rape_  his daughter, either.

  
“I…” her breath is too uneven to allow her to talk clearly, and she pants out her confession between rolls of her narrow, girlish hips “…I- I want you to break me… _please - break me apart…”_

 

_Mason_

 

He’s on her, in her, before he can consciously process what she’s said, her hands are trapped, crushed between their bodies, he has one hand over her mouth, forcing her head to turn aside, the other gripping her around the waist, his nails digging deep enough to cut, his teeth are fixed at the juncture of her neck and shoulder.

There had been plans and they had seemed important, but he can’t care anymore, he doesn’t care if he scares her, if he pushes too far, it’s all fallen away into this savagery, and is she crying? She must be, they all do eventually, and he pulls his mouth away from her neck, his teeth bared, he can taste blood.

Mason yanks her hips up, every jagged thrust bends her spine at an angle that must hurt, her hands are freed and they scramble across him, he can’t tell if she’s trying to fight him, she couldn’t hurt him if she tried.

He’s curled into her body, mouthing the point of her sternum, feeling the hummingbird thrum of her heart, the short-sharp struggle for each breath. Mason dissolves into the tidal force of driving into her, time dissolves in ravenous ecstasy, the heat of her hollows him out, her skin so fragile that he could take her to pieces with his bare hands.

His thumb hooks into the soft meat under her chin and he forces her head back, he can feel her teeth against the flesh of his hand.

He will not, can not last much longer, though he wants to, prays with all that’s left of him for forever, turns his face as he loses control of his frantic, arrhythmic thrusting, sinks his teeth into the swell of her breast as he is lost.

 

_Abigail_

 

Abigail is confused, for a moment. He’s on top of her before she has a second to process what’s going on, and it’s not what she wanted, is it? it’s not what she asked?

She’d thought he would keep doing what he’d been doing already, his fingers inside her, working her, but this is different. This is serious. This is what they’d been leading up to, before - before she said  _no,_ in her round-about, non-committal way. And he’d agreed, hadn’t he? He’d said  _you don’t have to._

But maybe it’s her fault that this is happening. She had told him to break her - was it really his fault, if he took her up on the offer? She had been vague, and now she was paying the price. Was he forcing her? He shoves her head to the side roughly, and she’s staring at the digital clock, staring: 4:44AM, staring at the darkened room, tears springing to her eyes not out of sadness or fear, but out of shock and pain. It hurts when he holds her this way, her bandaged ear pressed flush to the mattress, the sting of the wound, and she’s gasping for air, his hands pushing down uncomfortably, her throat constricted.

Her fault, though. All her fault. She had told him to hurt her, practically given him permission, and now he’s inside her. She’s wet, still - cunt slick with fluid, but it still hurts, he’d still forcing it at an odd angle, thrusting too fast, too hard, and she cries out, only to have her mouth muffled by the palm of his hand. She bites down, not aggressively but reflexively, in pain, her back arching off the bed as he fucks her, her hands scrabbling uselessly at his chest. Does she want him to stop? She’s not sure. She had wanted this, yes - but then he’d been so sweet, so gentle, and she'd made him cum once already, had expected that to be enough.

Abigail’s fingernails claw at the tender flesh of Mason’s chest, rend down the pale skin, and she can taste blood in her mouth somehow, hear the blood rushing in her ears. No, this isn’t what she wanted. Not like this. Not now. But at the same time, she’s still so turned on, so wet for him, and she can feel her orgasm building, almost against her will. He’d worked her up too much for the pain, the fear, the horror of this moment to destroy her pleasure, and as much as she hates herself for it she’s coming, hard, her legs wrapped around him, shuddering with every thrust he makes deeper and deeper inside her. She tastes blood in her mouth again - his? She’s biting down on his hand, she realizes, squirming beneath him like a worm on a hook, like a lure, and her eyes, her cheeks are damp with tears. Her cheeks are flushed.

She doesn’t say “no”. She can’t form the words. And even if she could, would she say them? Would she try, in earnest, to push him away? Fleetingly, she thinks of him inside her - naked, no protection - and she’s scared all over again, scared of disease and of tearing and of the slow burn that’s started in her cunt. She’s sure she’s bleeding, now - she must be. He’s the first person whose ever…

The thought trails off as her hips buck against his one final time, the last of the climax riding out around his cock, her eyes clenched tightly shut, murmuring “fuck” softly, murmuring “no”.

 

_Mason_

 

The day that Mason put his sister in the hospital was the first and only time his father had raised a fist against him. The memory of it has stuck with him, it has changed him, informed the grasping, hungry parts of him that  _there are limits._ It’s his father’s fists raining down on him, the belt across his back that he thinks of when he feels how still Abigail is lying under him. His spinal, lizard-brain reaction is to find some way to hide her, some way to distance himself from what he has done.

He lifts his head, even in the dark he can see the clear outlines of his teeth on the curve of her breast. In his head she’s all mixed up with Margot, bleeding out under him, paper white and the waver of their mother’s voice when she’d come back from the hospital and he had overheard her tell their father  _Margot could have died_ , he peers up at Abigail’s face, expecting her to be still, sees her blink once, twice, her eyes shining with tears.

Mason presses gentle kisses to her stomach, can’t help running his tongue over the impression his teeth have made, tastes blood again. He knows how hard he bit her, knows the bruise must be blooming under her delicate skin even as he slips out of her, moves her leg from where it’s wrapped around him and slides up beside her, cradles her to his chest and kisses her on the forehead, the cheeks, runs his hands across her back, petting her in slow, long strokes, licks her tears from his lips.

Slowly he becomes aware of pain in his hand, stinging across his chest. Her teeth have broken the skin of his palm and where she clawed him he can feel at least two deep scratches. He nuzzles into her side, mumbles “ _Are you okay? Abigail, Abigail, are you okay?"_ He can still feel Margot, bleeding and crying, he runs his hand down to feel between Abigail’s thighs, to make sure that she isn’t going to die. ” _You’re okay,“_ he whispers, ” _You’re fine, god I’m sorry, you’re okay, I’m sorry I was so rough.“_

His hand comes away sticky, but if it’s blood there isn’t enough to worry about, cold relief filters through him and he feels heavy, weighted by sleep, and he holds her close and rubs her back and lets his eyes fall closed. It’s gone five in the morning already.

 


	3. First Time (Interlude)

First Time (Interlude)

 

Abigail has her face pressed against his chest and he can feel her hot tears tracking across his skin. He runs his hands over her back, feeling where her vertebrae stand out as she sobs against him. Her fingers find the deep scratches that she’d given him and he can feel the panic building in her again, the hammering of her heart and how tense she is.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she chokes out, and he shushes her, presses kisses to the top of her head.

“Don’t do that,” he whispers, “Hey, no. I told you to do it, didn’t I? I told you to hurt me.”

Abigail has been a mess since she’d woken up and seen the blood smeared on the tops of her thighs; there wasn’t a lot of blood — and Mason had seen enough to be a judge of that — but it had scared her into a meltdown. He can’t believe his luck. Fucking her was one thing, but this was actual art, the sort of cinematic anguish that he’d thought could only exist in his imagination.

There is so much fentanyl in her system that she can’t keep up a real crying jag for long, the opiates are slowing her down, turning her emotions into a wallow of panic, bleeding into want, into revulsion, into guilt. He gives a silent prayer of thanks for whatever her father had done to make her into this divine creature.

He runs his hand up her side and feels dried come still smeared across her. They’re still mired in the leavings of the night before, it itches on his skin, across his belly, on his chest where his blood has dried in pretty, dark lines.

Her breathing is starting to even out again, and he kisses the top of her head again, smooths over her hair.

“Mason?” her voice hitches and breaks, “c-can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” he tells her, smiles when she lifts her head to look at him.

“What was …” she trails off and waiting for her to finish the thought is painful, but the moment is so lovely he couldn’t bear to rush her, “could you tell me about … about your first time? What it was like?”

He hums and gives her shoulders a squeeze. This is a difficult question. He doesn’t want to scare her just quite yet, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to tell her about what he and Margot had done as children without scaring her — it had certainly been traumatising enough for the nanny who had walked in on them in the playroom. Besides which, Mason thinks, Margot and he had done things but it was only kids’ stuff really, not the kind of thing that Abigail wants to know about.

She wants to know about vulnerability, wants to know that she’s not the only one in the whole dark, cold world who feels fucked up about fucking.

“I was fourteen,” he says, his voice is little more than a whisper, “maybe thirteen. I was flunking math class and my dad was giving me a hard time about my grades. I knew my math teacher wanted me — I saw him looking so I …”

He can see the incredulity on her face, the surprise — at what? that it was a man? at his age? — Mason kisses the tears from her cheeks and cups her cheek with one hand.

“I stayed back after chapel one friday and … let him.”

Quiet stretches between them, her fingertips are tracing patterns across his chest, and then her breath rushes out of her in a gusty “ _Oh._ ”

“Did it hurt?”

He nods, “I didn’t think it could hurt so much, I mean, people do it all the time, don’t they?” He can remember the holy hush of the chapel, the light from the stained glass windows washing his skin in colour, the shuddering, heaving gasps of the man behind him, in him. “He cried afterwards, begged me to forgive him for what he’d done … I didn’t mind so much, I guess. I stayed back every friday for the rest of the year. My dad was happy that the extra, uh,  _tutoring_  was paying off.”

 


End file.
